Dave-H

Soporific, does AP June 2008 contain the June 2008 Update to DirectX 9.0c Runtime? The reason I ask is because I've been having trouble installing it (see here) This hasn't been resolved as yet, and I was hoping that AP might succeed where the normal install routine is failing! Thanks, Dave.

I have dual booted Windows 98 and Windows 2000 for years now. I've never had any problem with keeping FAT32 drives. Being able to repair one operating system using the other has always been one of the main advantages IMO.

Thanks RetroOS. My Windows 98 version of cabinet.dll is 5.0.2147.1, which looks like a Windows 2000 file to me! I tried the version of cabinet.dll from my Windows 2000 installation, which is 5.0.2195.7000. That didn't work! I then tried version 5.1.2600.2180, which I downloaded. The version in 98MP10 seems to be the same. That didn't work either! Exactly the same error message. Even with my original cabinet.dll file, all of the cabinets in the Windows\Temp folder after extraction seem to open OK if I double click on them, with no error messages. Any more ideas?

This is the autoexec.bat file that I had to use to get Autopatcher to run. @ECHO OFF CLS PATH C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((850) C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EGA.CPI) >nul MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=850 >nul KEYB UK,,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\KEYBOARD.SYS Rename your autoexec.bat to autoexec.old, copy and paste the above into notepad and save it as autoexec.bat in c:\ Reboot and try Autopatcher again and see if it now works. It will set up things for the UK, as that's where I am! No harm in giving it a try, and if it fixes the problem you can then modify your own autoexec.bat accordingly so AP works with your USA settings. If this doesn't work by itself, you may need to do the same with your config.sys file. Here's mine - SHELL=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM /E:768 /P DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ANSI.SYS COUNTRY=044,850,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\COUNTRY.SYS DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO Good luck!

I had a lot of trouble getting Autopatcher to run the last time I used it too. It didn't actually crash, it just wouldn't run at all! This was due to a lack of environment space, caused by me having too much rubbish in my autoexec.bat file. It needs to be a "bare bones" one. Unfortunately I'm not in front of the machine in question at the moment, so I can't tell you what I ended up with, but I'll let you know if you like so you can try it.

Thanks RetroOS, that's good to know. As I said, my error log files gave no clue at all, and didn't appear to have even been written to! If you can isolate the dll(s) that needs to be updated for this to work that would be great.

Just tried downloading and installing this. Did have the August 2007 version installed already. Won't install. It extracts OK, but when I run DXSETUP.EXE and say OK to the legal stuff, I then get an error message - "An internal system error has occurred, see the files dxerror.log and directx.log in your Windows folder for more details" Needless to say, those files tell me nothing, because neither of them have been updated since 2006! Tried installing on Windows 2000 (dual boot machine) and needless to say it worked fine. Tried reinstalling the August 2007 version on Windows 98, also worked fine. Anyone any ideas? The MS download page says quite clearly that this update still supports Windows 98. I am using the offline installer package.

I'm a great fan of Opera, and have used version 9.xx ever since it came out, with 9.27 the latest version of course. My only problem is that it is very slow to start up and close down on Windows 98. It's much better on Windows 2000 (dual boot machine.) Apart from that it works very well, and does everything I want it too in a way that I'm very happy with. Unfortunately, IMO 9.50 was rushed out much too quickly, with a lot of serious, and known, bugs still in it. For me the killer was that it doesn't work properly with Quicktime plugins, a serious issue for me as I regularly use several Quicktime sites. I tried 9.50 and backed off back to 9.27 pretty quickly!

From personal experience I would definitely recommend the dual boot option. I never want to lose Windows 98 either, but now that disk space isn't an issue, I see no harm, and many advantages, in having a more up-to-date NT-based OS as well, in my case Windows 2000. I have no inclination to go to Vista, or even XP! Do be aware that a modern motherboard may have problems with Windows 98 due to lack of suitable drivers. My motherboard is a server board from 2003, and that was never tested on or claimed to support Windows 98. I was lucky though, it does work fine.

So if you double click on one of the IE favorites folder files, what happens? Does Opera open but not display the page?

If I go to my Internet Explorer favorites folder using Windows Explorer, and double click on one of the files, Opera opens and displays the webpage that it's pointing to. Those are internet shortcuts, and are actually .url files, although they show no file extension. Looking at my file types, .url fines are associated with this command "rundll32.exe shdocvw.dll,OpenURL %l" (without the quotes.) See if this is the case on your system.

Ah, so your problem is related to .url files, which are internet shortcuts (as used by IE favorites). The registry keys you quoted were only relevant to .html and .https files, which are quite different. Try this, go to Opera Tools>Preferences>Advanced>Programs and select the "Details" button. Check "URL shortcuts" on the left hand side and see if that does the trick.

Yes, if they are brand new disks they almost certainly will need to be formatted before they can be used. Put one in the drive, and double click on "My Computer" on the desktop. The A: drive should be shown along with at least the C: system hard drive. Right click on the drive A: icon, and select "format". Follow the instructions and format it to 1.44MB, using full format. Don't bother to transfer the system files. When the disk is successfully formatted, try writing to it again.

Are you trying to save from Excel itself, or using the Windows Explorer? Can you see the A: drive in "My Computer" and read the cointents of a disk that's in it?

I'm wondering Sfor, does your problem happen with .htm files as well as .html and .https files? I ask because your registry entries don't show any data for .htm files. I don't have an entry for .https files, but I do for .htm and .html files, and they are both of type "Opera.HTML" The entry for that, which is generated by Opera of course is - REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML] @="HTML Document" "EditFlags"=dword:00000000 "BrowserFlags"=dword:00000008 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\ScriptHostEncode] @="{0CF774D0-F077-11D1-B1BC-00C04F86C324}" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell] @="" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Edit] @="&Edit" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Edit\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Office XP\\Office10\\msohtmed.exe\" %1" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open\command] @="C:\\Program Files\\OPERA\\OPERA.EXE \"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open\ddeexec] @="\"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open\ddeexec\Application] @="Opera" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic] @="WWW_OpenURL" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Open in Internet Explorer] "EditFlags"=hex:01,00,00,00 @="Open in Internet Explorer" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Open in Internet Explorer\command] @="C:\\Program Files\\Internet\\IEXPLORE.EXE %1" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Print] @="&Print" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\Print\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Office XP\\Office10\\msohtmed.exe\" /p %1" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\ShellEx] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\ShellEx\IconHandler] @="{42042206-2D85-11D3-8CFF-005004838597}" Ignore the entry for Internet Explorer, I just added that manually so I can right click and choose to open the file in IE instead of Opera if I want to. The Office XP entry was put there by Office XP itself! Apart from the times when Opera is a bit too slow starting up, and opens with a blank page, this always works. If I double click on an htm or html file in Windows Explorer, or on a link say in an e-mail, Opera opens and displays the page as it should do. Although it sounds a bit drastic, I would uninstall Opera, and go through and delete manually all registry entries referring to it if any remain. Then make IE your default browser, assuming that you have it, and make sure that works with the file associations as it should. Then reinstall Opera and make that the default browser and see if it behaves any better.

Sorry for the misunderstanding(s) Sfor! If when you click a web link Opera opens but doesn't display the page, it sounds like it's not recognising the "%1" bit of the command. I have that happen sometimes, but it's usually (I think) because my installation of Opera (9.27 Build 8841) takes a long time to open up when running on Windows 98. It's much faster on Windows 2000 (dual boot). It's almost as if the fact that Opera is taking so long to load is causing the command to be forgotten somehow! How long does it take the Opera GUI to appear when you run it? If it's longer than 5 seconds this could be the problem. I found it was greatly improved after I emptied the Opera cache (Tools>Preference Settings>Advanced>History>Empty Now). If that helps, try setting the cache size to no more that 50MB or the problem will quickly come back. I queried this a lot on the Opera user forums, but never got a satisfactory answer.

Ah, OK. My equivalent of those keys look like this - REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Opera\\Opera.exe\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\ddeexec] @="\"%1\"" "NoActivateHandler"="" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Application] @="Opera" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic] @="WWW_OpenURL" REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\command] @="\"C:\\Program Files\\Opera\\Opera.exe\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\ddeexec] @="\"%1\"" "NoActivateHandler"="" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\ddeexec\Application] @="Opera" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\https\shell\open\ddeexec\Topic] @="WWW_OpenURL" It uses the DDE function, which yours doesn't seem to be doing.

I agree. If you're actually having problems with drive letter assignments, or are doing a new installation, then using the modified IO.SYS is probably a good idea. Otherwise, you need to be careful and be aware that the drive letters you're used to having can get altered by it and you may need to restore the original version to correct this.

I didn't assign specific letters with fdisk. What I probably did (and this is a very long time ago now so my memory is hazy!) was to only connect the main hard disk to the system, partition it into two partitions, one of which was primary and made active. That became the C: drive and the other partition the D: drive. I then added the other two disks to the system one by one, with single full capacity partitions. They became E: and F: You are probably right that they are in fact logical volumes inside extended partitions. I wasn't aware at the time that I was creating a non-standard configuration! Accepting that my configuration is non-standard, why would that mean that changing the IO.SYS file would rearrange the drive letters (presumably to what would have been the standard configuration.) Are the drive letter assignments actually stored in IO.SYS? That would certainly explain it.

Yeah Ive found that too. I have the same problem I think with the Adobe Reader, as when I open a pdf file I see a message at the top right hand corner that says update adobe reader, when I click on this I get an Adobe update page, when I select Windows 98 and hit go nothing updates. Do you know which version was last working for 98 S.E? I think that Acrobat 6.0.5 is the last version to officially support Windows 98SE, but I believe some people have had success with version 7, but not version 8. There is a very good and useful sticky thread at the top of the forum which lists the last versions of many pieces of software that officially support Windows 98.

Well, NO. Any hard drive IS partitioned, at least with ONE partition. Of course, I should have said that the drives in question are single partitions on separate physical disks! Booted from a floppy and the drive letters remained the same, with the addition of a RAM drive G: My two DVD drives, normally G: and H: became H: and I: as you would expect. It's so long ago now, but I assigned the drives in DOS using fdisk, and it may well be that to get them the way I wanted them I had to physically disconnect drives so they weren't visible to fdisk. That may have been the way that I got the extended partition on the first disk to be D: I do remember that I had to reassign them in Windows 2000 to get the letters the same as in Windows 98, but at least that's relatively easy to do!

I certainly only have one primary partition, which is the boot drive C: This was the only drive not relabelled when I replaced the IO.SYS file. D: is indeed a logical volume inside an extended partition, on the same physical disk as the C: drive. The other two drives are not partitioned. All drives are all FAT32 as they have to be for access under Windows 98 of course.

Thanks for that info, I was having the same problems with shockwave, but I installed the version you rolled back to and hey presto it installed and works when visiting the Adobe test page. Glad you got it working! I really do wish that software manufacturers would make it clear what operating systems their products do or don't support. Adobe did not make it clear in this case, and they're not alone in this. All software download pages should make it clear which OSs the thing runs on, and should also give links for the latest version that does run on other OSs. You do get the impression now on many download sites that if you run any Windows version before XP SP2 you don't exist any more!

Works OK for me. My registry entry is slightly different from that quoted, this may by significant, I don't know. REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Opera.HTML\shell\open\command] @="C:\\PROGRAM FILES\\OPERA\\OPERA.EXE \"%1\""

Could you please post how your Hard drive is partitioned and how letters were before and after using the patched files? FYI, though unrelated: Letter Assigner: http://www.v72735.f2s.com/LetAssig/ jaclaz My main drive is partitioned into C: (Windows 98SE and System drive) and D: (Windows 2000 drive) I also have a separate archive drive E:, and a removable EIDE drive F: If I remember correctly, C: stayed the same, E: became D:, F: became E: I can't remember what happened to D:! Very worrying at the time, but fortunately putting the original IO.SYS file back fixed it! I was I thought facing the horror of using fdisk, which always frightens me to death!